Ra Ra Tharakawo Lyrics by Clarence WijewardenaGeorge SenanayakeJackson Anthony

At night the stars murmur and speak
They twinkle and fade, you can’t trust them, you can’t believe them
Did you hear the tales they told, my love?

(The tales that close, loving eyes tell each other
The tales that fall softly, secretly, on the ear…//)
The tales held in the heart, spoken with hands entwined
Who is there to hear them now?

At night the stars….

(The dances they dance, the songs they sing
The looks they cast from the corner of the eye…//)
The things they say and do, the things they watch and seek out
Are they white or are they black
Are they good or bad, tell me

At night the stars….

A young man is sitting out under a night sky with the girl he loves, and he turns the stars into the keepers of their secret. The whole song is a quiet, teasing conversation between the two of them, the kind that happens when a couple is still hiding how they feel from everyone around them. He asks her softly, did you hear what the stars were whispering about us?

The opening image is the heart of it. The stars murmur and tell tales, but they keep twinkling and fading, so he says you can’t quite trust them, you can’t believe them. In Sinhala love song the night sky is the one witness lovers can speak in front of, and here the flickering of the stars stands for how their own romance is still uncertain and unspoken, glimmering one moment and gone the next, nothing you can hold onto yet. Then he names the small private things that pass between two people falling in love: eyes drawing close and meeting, secrets murmured so softly they barely reach the ear, words held in the heart while their hands are clasped together. And he asks, half playful and half tender, who else could possibly hear any of this? It is theirs alone.

In the second part he steps back and looks at all of it from the outside, the way a couple does when they wonder what others would think. The dances, the songs, the sidelong glances thrown from the corner of the eye, everything they say and do and look for in each other, he asks whether it is white or black, good or bad. White and black here are the plain Sinhala way of asking right or wrong, innocent or guilty. He is not really troubled by the answer; it is the gentle uncertainty of young love testing itself, wondering if what they feel is allowed.

What you are left with is the soft, secret thrill of early romance, two people sharing glances and whispers that the rest of the world hasn’t noticed yet, with only the stars looking on. It is one of those songs that stays light on its feet and still carries the whole sweetness of falling for someone in secret.